Abandoned Motorola Headquarters (2020)
abandonedspaces.com
abandonedspaces.com
“there were old wall slogans inside that must have been added to motivate and inspire the employees” … “ the tall building had several brick structures on the lower main level. He suspected that those structures probably had plants and ferns in them so that important business clients and employees would be met with a pleasing sight upon entering.” … “Martin Gonzalez also noticed pictures of people using Motorola products that had been left on the walls of the building.”
Indeed, the ways of the people of the Motorola civilization of around 2011CE are mysterious and strange to us. Perhaps the central atrium served some kind of ritual purpose? Were prisoners perhaps thrown off the upper balconies as a sacrifice to their gods? We will never really know.
Okay so this is a cult.
Put the book down and spent remaining career avoiding anyplace that mentioned it.
But it's true. Citizens of those ancient Egyptian cities probably did roll their eyes at some of the wall hieroglyphs.
Especially because the pharaohs exaggerated their victories.
And the priests probably made up ridiculous stories of what their gods "did" and "accomplished"
Some citizens were probably just as incredulous as we are today.
Ramses II exaggerated even his defeats, that is, he claimed that as his victories. For example the famous wall relief of Ramses II slaying the Hittites at the Battle of Kadesh. https://www.memphis.edu/hypostyle/tour_hall/ramesses_ii_scen...
In reality it was a terrible defeat and it allowed the Hittites to limit Egypt sphere of influence to no further West than Canaan.
Vaclav Havel, The Power of the Powerless, 1978
https://www.nonviolent-conflict.org/wp-content/uploads/1979/...
Today they are still active in Medical, TVs and light, a faint shadow of what they used to be.
Edit: this comment is false. Please ignore.
(Given that this is in my country and in my field of interest that's a pretty good indication of how big of a miss this is, so thank you for the correction.)
I remember after that their consumer electronics got really, really bad. Basically all their products were just... not finished. The firmware on most of their devices was just terribly buggy, and features advertised on the box where sometimes not even available. I remember having an MP3 player where selecting the FM radio mode would just crash the device. Never did they release a firmware version that would enable FM radio mode. I had to carry a small metal pin in my wallet, just to be able to use the reset button behind a tiny hole in the side of the MP3 player. I usually had to reset it once or twice a day.
I also had a media streamer that did not work at all out of the box, it just didn't support any of the advertised codecs. And I had a Phlips TV that would reliably crash when switching from TV mode to Teletext mode.
Living in the Netherlands, I felt kind of obligated to choose Philips over brands such as Samsung. However, many times I found myself returning a Philips appliance, and buying a Korean/Japanese made alternative instead.
Never, ever again will I trust them for consumer electronics.
And given how much goodwill that brand had it is very impressive how fast it was run into the ground. I still see their TVs for sale here, and medical devices and some stuff for infants.
Basically they are banking on their previous glories and advertising.
Sometimes you can spot the exact same product from a noname manufacturer, it's just missing the right sticker.
They have been slowly getting out of the consumer business for a long time. They just recently spun off their remaining consumer appliances business after having spun off lighting some years ago.
“We advance humanity.”
I guess the message is, don’t take yourself too seriously, most of where companies succeed is happenstance. It still takes a moment to all visitors to understand that it can’t be serious.
We are innovative. We constantly create ingenious solutions to the real challenges of today, tomorrow and beyond.
We are passionate. We meet every challenge with energy and determination, always pursuing ever-higher standards.
We are driven. We keep it simple by focusing on what matters most so we can seize opportunities with speed and confidence.
We are accountable. We stand behind the work we do, the contributions we make and the high business standards we maintain.
We are partners. We succeed together because we respect all individuals and value contributions from colleagues and customers alike.
https://wearethemutants.com/2017/12/06/david-macauleys-motel...
Multiple sacrificial altars surrounded by balconies from which the faithful could watch.
I worked in Motorola for 10 years from the late 90's. I was based in Europe but travelled to Schaumburg every two months or so (or to Phoenix).
It is really a shock to see this place abandoned - last time I was there (15 years ago) it was very much alive.
It has been a long time since I had such a nostalgic squeeze of heart.
Once sold, the company moved out. Shortly after, demolition began, and that's when these pictures were taken. The damage is from demolition, not from the normal "abandoned for 10 years deterioration" you see on those Urban Explorer Youtube videos. People worked in these buildings just a few years ago, and a lot of them had been remodeled somewhat recently and were actually pretty nice inside. The 6-story building with the large atrium was newer than the other parts and is still there and the new owner/developer is hoping to continue to use it as an office building (last I heard anyway).
Motorola also still occupies the 14-story building that used to be the world headquarters as well as another large building on the property. The real story here is much more mundane: a big company sold off some valuable real estate as part of a move to chase a younger workforce in downtown Chicago (jury's still out on that decision, especially with a more WFH-focused future).
There was also a big mall a bit south (I forgot the name) , very much different from the ones we had at home (staring with the fact that you drove around the mall, and not walked inside.
Good memories.
I'm not sure what you mean. While Woodfield has a rather large parking lot, it was definitely the case that the vast majority of people parked and went inside. You couldn't get to the Apple Store, for example, without going inside. You could get to the anchor stores on the ends from the outside, but you'd often shop there, then go into the mall to get other things. (Or at least my spouse and I did that frequently.)
The man, later identified as Javier Garcia of Palatine, Illinois, was charged with terrorism as a result of the incident; he appeared in court on September 29, 2019, and was denied bond. He appeared in court again on October 1, 2019, and was due back in court on January 27, 2020.[45][46][47][48][49] Garcia's family spoke out arguing that Javier is not a terrorist and that he has schizophrenia, though a police investigation shows evidence that Garcia's attack was premeditated, with investigators releasing – in part – that Garcia "searched 'Woodfield mall,' the aerial view of the mall and mall premises 124 times between 9/19/19 at 14:38 and 9/20/19 at 12:55."[50] Garcia has since also been charged with an unrelated arson case from September 8, 2019, in his hometown of Palatine.[51]"
I was in Google Patents and I interviewed people for the position of "acquirer of patents." This was a period when they actually thought the "throw weight" of your patent portfolio really mattered in cross-licensing deals. Most of those patents were utterly worthless in any sort of deal.
Google stock was eventually included in his compensation package, though. I can imagine that eased some of the worry.
Could anyone expand on this? Sounds interesting, and I know little about it.
The graphs of who was suing whom are hilarious by today's standards,.
I'm not familiar with that particular case, but I really doubt that a clip from 2001 was dispositive of anything. Unless the patent really was as broad as "a flat computing device."
I guess I can go look up that design patent now. It's entirely possible that 2001 did anticipate the look of the iPad, but we can also look at the record of the trial to find out how this played out.
Also, yes, you're right, forgot some key details after the 10 years. Can't believe it was that long ago.
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/4178089/apple-inc-v-sam...
I know this case continued up to at least 2015, since that was when I went to watch for a day. When I went, there were some utility patents at issue.
This is an exaggeration of course, but perhaps not far off the mark.
Cross-licensing deals are immensely complicated. You have to think about indemnifying the partners, in particular. I actually sat in the Apple v. Samsung trial for one day, because Google was indemnifying Samsung, as they frequently do for Android partners.
A big problem with Motorola was: they actually make the hardware, so Google was being sued directly. The patent infringement suits are usually against the company that makes the device.
So I bought one, and I really liked it - I got regular OS updates (unlike many Android licensees), the phone had a gorgeous walnut veneer back, and it fit well in my hand. Nice.
If anything Nokia cocked up, they made a phone so good I haven't seen the need to upgrade and since it's AndroidOne I'm still getting updates.
I had to laugh at the clear piss take of the Jonny Ive Apple videos - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmJitfThItk at the time it got my attention and they are that tough.
8000 miles on a motorcycle handlebar mount and it looks like it came out the box.
https://johlerdemolition.com/portfolio-items/motorola-schaum...
Edit: I meant this in a positive tone, not a negative. I'm glad they take pride in their work.
I’m proud too when I refactor bad code.
What I liked was, at the end of each day, the crew lined up all the equipment and put each in what I would call a "majestic" pose, like with its arm looking purposeful. I thought it gave a cool, and professional look to the construction site, and showed they obviously cared about what they were doing, to clean up and pose the equipment, vs just leaving it where it was when the shift ended.
From my outsider view, it seems the companies who really invest in R&D make the best things happen. Unfortunately the best doesn't always mean the most long term successful (depends on many many more factors than just the quality of the product).
I would love to see a world where it was fashionable for companies to proudly devote 20+% to R&D. It seems instead like R&D is 2% at best, and marketing (or legal... patents) is 18%.
It turned out to be easier to take a company that was great at software, and turn it into a cellphone company, rather than trying to take a cellphone company and make it great at software.
Before the start of the smartphone revolution (circa 2005) the "smartphones" of the time are what we'd call flip-phones now. They were smart in the sense that they could run apps (J2ME, blech), take pictures and such.
Moto had dozens of different models at any given point in time. All running various kinds of (what we'd call today) embedded operating systems, closer to what we'd class as a RTOS these days. Stuff like Symbian. Most / all of them were not that easy to do application development with. And none could really scale up in processing power (multi-core, which wasn't a thing back then), decent TCP/IP networking, and driving a large and complicated GUI.
In one sense, as a leader in the cell phone business, they should have been well placed to make a big splash with smartphones. But none of their software on that side of things was able to transition to that, which is why they adopted Android. To their credit, they did produce some decent Android phones, but because they relied on Google, they were now also competing severely with HTC, Samsung, LG and others.
All of my interactions with the cellphone division were somewhat negative. You got the impression that they thought of themselves as the best of the best and nothing you could offer was worth their attention. The damned RAZR success probably doomed them for good. I was using the smartphones every single day and was making suggestions for UI improvements and software features. They ignored all of it. Oh well. Everything I suggested became obvious updates once the general public had used the iPhone for a year or two.
Edit: apparently Nokia bought out Siemens years ago
Let's see, what all was sold off:
computer division, analog ICs (Onsemi), digitial ICs (Freescale, NXP), base stations (as mentioned), mobile phones (Motorola Mobility, Google, Lenovo). What did I miss?
It is funny that the Motorola as we knew it is gone, but many of the pieces remain. And others were able to make money using those pieces.
To this day I still fail to understand the corporate strategy behind all that.
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/conglomeratediscount.as...
I don't know how Motorola could have been fixed though.
Motorola broke up into way more than two companies over time. It sold its TV business to Matsushita in 1974. Motorola bought General Instruments and became the largest builder of set-top devices in the world and also spun off ON Semiconductor in 1999. Later this home products division would largely end up sold to Arris. Freescale Semiconductor split off in 2003 then later merged into NXP in 2015. Further spinoffs and department selloffs include Iridium, what became General Dynamics Decision Systems, and Cambium Networks.
The second incarnation of the Iridium corporation we know now is the group of people who bought it at pennies on the dollar in the bankruptcy auction.
Accounting tricks aside, they didn't lose money on the downfall.
I worked with a group of them a few years ago. Their skills were shit but they all walked around expecting managerial positions.
I also worked with a group that spun out of Paging down in Florida and helped design XM Radio's transmission protocol. That was a neat design.
For instance Xerox was doing plenty of cool and innovative stuff with GUIs and the mouse but then it was someone like Jobs (and Bill Gates) that turned that into a hot product. Where's Xerox now? Where's Apple?
In engineering we too often forget that sales and marketing are crucial.
[1] www.albertcory.io
Before internet, you marketed by being in the right places with the right people. Now you have to have a global internet strategy and compete with companies who have nothing but marketing (and funding).
At the time I was underwhelmed, I think in part because I knew Motorola as a failing microprocessor company, but I was sad I didn't see what appeared to be that museum space in any of the pictures in the linked gallery.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1aEJFTUmkg
I find it fascinating how all the metal bits are carefully separated and stacked (using big hydraulic claws) for recycling.
For those that are wondering, here is the campus on maps: https://goo.gl/maps/WdHju125jSbmRbaS9. It looks like it's mostly been torn down now (streetview and satellite show it gone).
I never visited the campus. My next door neighbor worked there (he was a big RF guy and had a a giant shortwave antenna on his roof). They also employed so many people that they had their own stoplights at their entrance/exit. Plus the city convinced them to do staggered start/end times for their employees as to not flood the roads around the building.
Motorola has fallen far! When I started a job at a big company in a Chicago suburb, they actually asked for a show of hands "who's from Motorola" and like 17/20 people raised their hands!
Then they outsourced manufacturing (the phones were no longer bullet proof after the outsourcing / offshoring). So they made Harvard a distribution center. They were hoping to also be able to pull workers from Rockford, but that didn't really work out either.
At one point, after Moto sold the building, an investor was going to turn it into the worlds largest indoor water park. That never panned out either.
https://bell.works/new-jersey/explore/
Not to its full, old glory, but at least it is not abandoned anymore.
How utterly useless those are to company culture is made evident by how pathetic they look now, just left behind and meaningless.
Disclosure: I have worked in construction.
I dont mean to get too off topic but please dont do this. Wandering abandoned buildings is very dangerous. Roofs and stairs can collapse seemingly for no reason, exposed floor tile can release asbestos, and dry bathrooms without water in the pipes can expose you to potentially lethal concentrations of sewer gasses like methane and hydrogen sulfide that build up in enclosed restrooms with no power to ventilation systems.
If a fire starts, most emergency exits will be barracaded.
Or this being every corporate HQ because of the collapse of Western Capitalism in the face of global warming.
I'm sure life will go on though.
The non-agricultural, non-forestry parts of the California economy can do just fine on desalinated seawater.
They became complacent, they abandoned their technical leadership for bean counters, and became dust.
Intel was almost going down that road.
There's been some very hard years in between and it's a smaller company now, but it's actually doing very well by many standards.
Now that I fact check myself, Qualcomm isn't based in Scandinavia like I thought, but rather San Diego. I guess I just mix all hot-hardware companies of the '90s in with Ericsson!
What next??
If they ever filmed a movie version of that game (which they probably shouldn't, as it could never do the game justice), they should do it at that location...
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains."
[1] https://goo.gl/maps/CKrEbTkRDwWQNc2d8 Yes, it's a huge hexagon shaped building.
Things have changed, the campus plus the airport were a former airbase carved out of the wilderness and used during the Cuban Missle Crisis.
Boca was a small resort town on the coast and you had to go way west of town into the boonies before you came upon FAU out in the woods. Go much further west and it was basically everglades after that.
One summer as a teenager a buddy and myself were riding horses about that far west of Boca Lake. Nothing but pines & palmettos for miles, it would not be fun to try and hike it because you need to be up on the horse to see over the palmettos.
But this was not like any other summer. We came upon an unfamiliar clearing.
As we got closer it loomed larger, it was zero vegetation, nothing but dirt with the rest of the woods still there as a wall on the other side of the field.
We rode on out into the cleared land, this was no farm, you could see for miles to the north and south, yes we were in the middle of I-95 on horses, but no worries we were the earliest passenger traffic and there was no pavement or any way to get there by car yet.
Well when they built the IBM location it was widely known to be for secret projects, so it was recognized to be appropriate for it to be like the Pentagon, except of course a hexagon instead.
My grandma wanted me to work there, some of her clients knew some of the secrets, she was a fortune-teller.
I went to the university instead.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5k3Kc0avyDJ2nG9Kxm9JmQ
Just visiting Wikipedia found out that they weapon grade Uranium in an underground lab... yikes!
Beautiful!
A similar thing happened to the IBM campus in Austin. "The Domain" is essentially land that was formerly owned by IBM. I believe there are plans to further develop the remaining site as well.
I found this particular statement really funny, as there's a Top Golf adjacent to the current IBM Austin site.
Counterclockwise from the northwest the credit union is long gone (now "Andigo" and on Meacham) though I think the building is still there, there are some nice looking (and pricey!) apartments along the west side, then there's Top Golf at the southwest corner (which has been in operation for quite some time - pretty sure they were open before the pandemic). South center of the property along the expressway is the area still owned and occupied by a Motorola company. There's Zurich America at the southeast corner, which was the first new construction on the campus several years ago, and another new building ("B") just north and a little west of it that appears finished but I'm not sure it's actually occupied yet - I rarely drive by there during business hours. The east and northeast parts aren't really developed yet, but they're doing a lot of work on the roads around there (Algonquin and Meacham). There's an area of (I think) condos still under construction on the north side along Algonquin, the westernmost buildings are already occupied and they're working east at a pretty decent clip. In the center of the complex is the "B" building mentioned above, as well as the remaining unoccupied old Motorola property.
There's also other construction in the area - one new apartment complex on Algonquin a bit west that's been there for a couple years, IIRC built on vacant land. The single-story office complex directly northwest of the campus was partially removed and is under construction for a new set of luxury apartments or condos, the western half of that complex is also for sale and I wouldn't be surprised to see it torn down and built on soon as well.
My biggest disappointment about the whole thing is that once upon a time there was possibly going to be something called the STAR line, basically a commuter rail line built in the center of 90 running from O'Hare out to Elgin then south. I had dreams of them turning part of the Moto campus into a station and parking for that - would have been great for Schaumburg a decade or two back by providing easy access to the core of Schaumburg's shopping areas when malls were still highly relevant.
Here are some pictures from Fukushima:
I recommend Lana’s Instagram. A really fascinating and scary at the same time pics of soviet abandoned building and industrial places.
Veridian Dynamics?
Motorola is still alive, in another formal.
https://www.derelictplaces.co.uk/
for more of this type of thing.
Zombnb.